Recombination

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UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA

VOLUME 6 , FEBRUARY 2018

RECOMBINATION Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine Biannual Newsletter

The Recombination annual newsletter describes the activities of the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences from January 1, 2018 through July 28, 2018

In This Issue: • Research News • New Faculty • Faculty Accomplishments • Student Achievements • Faculty News • Other News

Letter From The Director

Dr. Pappachan E. Kolattukudy

Thanks to the foresight of Vice President M.J. Soileau, Provost Gary Whitehouse and President Hitt, who made the commitment to support the plan I proposed to them seven years ago to build a biomedical research and education enterprise, such an enterprise is now flourishing at UCF. It is a great pleasure to report that the Burnett School is making great progress in meeting our goals on all fronts, thanks to the dedication and exceptional hard work of our faculty, staff and research personnel. Our physical facilities expanded to provide space for the growing programs. The 198,000 sq. ft. Burnett School of Biomedical Science building at Lake Nona became ready for occupancy last spring and currently 13 research teams are working in the building. This building has a variety of sophisticated state-of-the-art shared core instrumentation facilities that should enhance our ability to conduct research at the cutting edge. The 25,000 sq. ft. transgenic animal facility has become functional and started serving the research needs of our programs. We completed the refurbishing of the Biomolecular Science annex in the Research Park. A laboratory vacated by Cardiopulmonary Sciences in HPA2 is being converted into a state-of-the-art biotechnology teaching laboratory with modern instrumentation. Shuttle service and video hookups started to function to help meet the challenges posed by the 25-mile separation of the Burnett building from the main campus although many challenges still remain. Our academic programs are constantly undergoing renewal to provide our students training in the emerging technologies in biomedical science to prepare them for tomorrow’s employment market. New courses in biotechnological areas such as stem cell biology, tissue engineering, bio imaging and biotechnology laboratory methods are being offered. The newly developed biotechnology B.S. and M.S. programs are already beginning to generate workforce for the emerging biotechnology industry. The new M.S./M.B.A .and Ph.D./M.B.A. programs being offered in collaboration with the College of Business Administration are to provide the managerial workforce for the biotechnology industry. Our academic programs are growing in quality and size. Last year more than 14,000 students

were enrolled in our courses and this fall our enrollment increased more than 11 percent. We currently have 2,523 majors in our undergraduate degree programs, more than 12 percent increase over the last year. Our graduate programs also are growing; currently we have 115 graduate students, 70 in Ph.D. and 45 in the M.S. programs. More than 100 undergraduate students are conducting laboratory research. Five of our undergraduates are listed as co-authors on journal articles and 22 contributed to 21 different abstracts/presentations. Thanks to the efforts of our advising staff who pays special attention to students with special needs, BSBS has one of the lowest percentage of students on probation. Of the 25 presentations given at the Showcase of Undergraduate Research (SURE), our students received two first place, a second place and two honorable mentions in the Life Sciences category. Of the 1,665 students in the Burnett Honors College, 222 of them are Molecular Biology and Microbiology majors. Of the 270 active Honors in the Major students, 13 are in Burnett School. We have 61 active LEAD Scholars. Two Molecular Biology and Microbiology majors won Honors in the Major and three students won the Order of Pegasus, the university’s most prestigious award. We had six students from abroad— Holland, Spain, South Africa, China and Iraq—sent here to receive training by working in our research laboratories. Our faculty collaborate with researchers at the national level at the University of California, University of Miami, Ohio State University, University of Florida, etc., and internationally in Switzerland, Canada, Austria, Brazil, China, France, India, Italy, Japan, Jordan, etc. The faculty of the Burnett School are supported by more than $12.6 million per year from nationally competitive sources such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Department of Defense. A shared instrumentation grant was awarded to set up a sophisticated confocal imaging system. This is a remarkable achievement by our extremely dedicated faculty, considering the fact that the success rate in obtaining such nationally competitive grants has hit the lowest point ever. Our faculty members continued to publish in high-impact journals such as Nature Cell Biology, Journal of Immunology, Cell Death and Differ-


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